It's no secret that telco service providers are extremely averse to change, often to their own detriment. It's both fascinating and unique when a highly representative group of service providers say they're eager to invest money and resources into a system that completely overthrows legacy processes.

Such was the message from the overwhelming majority of service providers in Heavy Reading's Thought Leadership Council (TLC) who said to expect aggressive spending in business/operations support system (B/OSS) transformation for the foreseeable future. The majority of service providers taking part in the Q&A forum expect budget increases of at least 5 percent a year are expected for B/OSS transformation through 2023.

According to TLC participants, the biggest barrier to B/OSS transformation is resistance to change, largely brought about by legacy mindsets. One service provider describes the culture as one in which senior leadership asks engineers to figure out how they can work themselves out of a job, while the engineers are smart enough to understand what they're being asked to do.

B/OSS Transformation Focus Group: Hefty Budget Increases Expected Through 2023 was generated from a Q&A with service provider employees who are B/OSS experts. This focus group was asked 12 questions about revenue, deployment and technology related to B/OSS transformation. The results clearly indicate that service providers want and are eager to invest in B/OSS transformation, even as they acknowledge doing so will not be a painless endeavor.

About 67 percent of TLC service providers will dedicate more than 15 percent of their IT budget in 2018 to B/OSS transformation, shown in the excerpt below. Further, 27 percent of panelists said their organizations will dedicate 11-15 percent of the 2018 IT budget to B/OSS transformation. It's interesting to note here that while 7 percent of participating service providers will spend 5 percent or less of the 2018 IT budget on B/OSS transformation, none of the participating service providers are decreasing B/OSS transformation budgets for 2018.